To complain about teacher weight comments

[jd88123]

My Daughter is in S1 aged 12 and was in biology class. Her teacher made them all weigh themselves.
My DD went through puberty age 10 and has boobs and a bum. Her BMI is 22 which is normal.
She said the teacher told them to "put 50kg down if you don't want to put your real weight as this is normal".
I am fuming about this as my DD is already weight conscious and has said she is going on a diet which I don't condone as she is healthy.
I think the teacher was very irresponsible to comment this and I sent a complaint about it to her guidance teacher which they've said they are looking in to.
I feel it's so wrong for children to compare themselves to each other as everyone is different. It's so damaging to their self esteem and at this age all girls especially have so much pressure to be thin and beautiful from the media.
Would you have complained?

I don't know, I think they should steer clear of weight and height.

Maybe do breast size and penis length instead, after all they are just human characteristics as well?

I'm a teacher and I would never run an activity like this. I was a very average-weighted teen but I remember feeling very conscious of my appearance and that weight is a big part of that. I think the activity was ill-advised, and the teacher was lucky not to have a more challenging class where nasty comments could have sparked. As a parent, yes I probably would say something along the lines of "I just want to pass on that this activity was uncomfortable for my DD to take part in". I appreciate that the lesson was probably a bit dry, and this was a way of jazzing it up a bit, but I think it was a bit ill-advised.

Was the nurse short? Some women make such stupid nasty comments towards tall girls. Winds me up.

57kg is not a lot when you are tall.

You complained about that! I do feel for people working in schools. Your pointless, self absorbed complaint is going to waste the time of an administator to record it and pass it on and respond to you, waste of the teachers time to respond, waste of someone higher up to review it. All for what? Because your daughter, with a normal BMI got upset her weight is over the average!

Sorry but this makes me angry. It's your responsibility as a parent to explain to her that the teacher meant no harm, her comment wasn't personal and she is a perfect weight for her height and that frankly, she is wasting her energy being upset about such a throwaway comment.

50kg isn't a normal weight for an 11yr old

Rather than complaining, put your energy into educating your child about different weights, body shapes etc and what a healthy weight means.
She will hear far worse from others, and the teacher doesn’t deserve reproof when they were obviously trying to be sensitive about the subject.

I don’t see anything wrong with what the teacher did. I remember doing this in biology when I was in school and my kids have done it too.

The teacher was sensitive and didn’t force kids to weigh themselves and gave a very generous 50kg as a “normal” weight they can use to plot data if they preferred. Looking at the growth charts, a girl on the 50th percentile would track at 40kg at 12 years old.

Exactly. You're in the profession and you wouldn't do this because you're cognisant. It's a shame that other teachers are not when this is a 'thing' that has been going on for years.

Height doesn't have the same impact but achieves the same objective. A bit of thinking shouldn't be beyond the wit of teaching staff.

I still remember going through an exercise like this age 11, and it’s 50 years ago.
i was an overweight child even then, and am still
even if I’d had an option of putting an average weight, I know everyone in class would be thinking I was fat, and that’s why I didn’t want to weigh in. Wasn’t given that option. I was the outlying data point on the chart that was produced, and veryone in my year group got to know my weight. It was humiliating, I couldn’t face going to school for 3 days and feigned illness. I’ve never forgotten

those saying it was acceptable. No it wasn’t. You can measure height if learn8ng about normal distribution curves of anatomical variation. Whist BMI can be discussed, every bloody adult, teacher or not, must surely realise how a conversation like that can affect teens, especially teen girls . It’s a highly risky thing to do, in a public classroom. Let them cover bmi as homework at that age, with parents to help calibrate responses, not a class of 30 other brutal teens.

What about short people or the freakishly tall? There is always someone who wants to make an issue out of something. Slippery slope to start pandering to it.

There is a big difference about hearing stuff on SM versus having her weight made public knowledge amoungst her peer group of 30 feral teenagers, who will no doubt be saying “ why didn’t she want to be weighed” “ 50kg is heavy” etc
we don’t go to school to be publically humiliated

howcwould you like your weight , or breast size to be measured publically at work? Nope? Well it’s no bloody different.

SM is an entirely different pit of hell kids can fall into re any vulnerabilities or curiosities. And not what this is about

sure, teaching kids resilience is vital. But this is not acceptable. Would the teachers in staff room all do it and share with all kids at school? Nope, because this is personal information only.

everyone knows you can’t do anything about you’re height.

weight however is made entirely responsibility of the individual. The world is prejudiced against fat people. That’s a fact. People who are fat are labelled as greedy, gluttons, lazy, stupid etc.

issues with weight can lead to eating disorders. Which are way more common than body dysmorphia related to height issues.

there’s a world of difference. And you know that.

The issue is she said 50kg was normal meaning kids would see themselves as abnormal if higher or lower.

Teacher could have simply said use your actual weight or 50kg for the purpose of the exercise without commenting what was average or what was "normal". If course girls who may be over 50kg or under may then feel self conscious. It is a difficult age when they are maturing at different stages.

There's a World of difference for you because you were overweight as a child. Other people will be sensitive about other things. Probably whatever the teacher chose to measure, someone would have a moan about it. "Dear so called teacher, my daughter is increadibly self conscious about her massive hands" etc. etc.

Bodies come in a range of shapes and sizes, that we assume kids are too mentally fragile to hear that is ridiculous.

Exceptionally tall, of course is going to weigh more than average. If the OPs daughter was very tall for her age she would have mentioned that, although I’m guessing she wouldn’t have felt compelled to complain about it if she was a tall slim girl.

'Disordered thinking', how exactly? I haven't weighed myself in years, couldn't care less!

Exactly - and it could be argued that 50kgs is a good round average number.

I am amazed that any teacher would make children weigh themselves in class!
It is a personal matter for individuals, parents and health staff. School involvement should be made in private.
Public weighing (because the children will get peer pressure to tell what they weigh, or another child will look, or if they put the suggested 50kg they will be shamed for that too) is basically an invitation to bullies.
I would be furious.

Why say "freakishly tall" vs "short people" 🤨

I think weight should not be taboo. We are different weights, fact.
However, weighing a group of teens in front of each other, recipe for trouble.

Having a child go through an eating disorder I find comments like this very triggering. I will always be sensitive to weight and food after what we’ve been through but trying to put my personal feelings aside I feel the teacher has handled this badly and many other items could of been used instead of people. We live in such a body conscious society, muscle weighs more, someone needing the toilet will weigh more but no one wants to be the heaviest. It’s a very sensitive subject and needs to be handled sensitively and a class room setting with lots of pre teens isn’t the place.

God that annoys me so much. I went down to 8 stone odd in my early 20s at 5'7", I think 57kg was about my lightest. I was a size 6 in clothes in the 2000s so god knows what that would be now - a 4 probably, size 0 in the US. With my build I should be about 65-70kg. I thought my legs were too muscly and was trying to make them thin. Even at 57kg they were still muscly and the rest of me was Ariana Grande thin.

DD2 is 16, 70kg and 5'10" and a size 8 in clothes, and very fit and healthy, and confident in her body. I would go mad at anyone in authority telling her she is too big for a girl.

You're wrong.

OP already said her daughters BMI is 22 so she's perfectly healthy. She's just developing quicker than average.

Tall girls still can be upset by comments and comparisons about how "big" they are, and how much they weigh vs short girls. Even if they're the perfect weight for their height.

So your child is on the 80th centile for BMI, she is technically in the OK weight range, but only just....

I think if you wouldn't line a group of adults up at work and publicly display their weight then we absolutely shouldn't be expecting pre teen children to be happy to do it.
They are not babies! They can spot the overweight child in their class and once they hone in on them they have another stick to beat them with....I remember getting weighed in physics when I was about 14, I have never been so ashamed in my life. If I found out my children had been weighed without my consent I would go ballistic (both a healthy weight) sod what the teacher thinks!